A generation grew up with screens everywhere, and everyone assumed they'd show up as technology experts. Instead the tools got so easy that they never had to troubleshoot anything, and "digital native" stopped meaning anything. I think "AI native" is heading the same direction, and that's good news. If you're working right now, you're learning AI at the best possible time to learn it: it's good enough to change how you work and unreliable enough to teach you where it breaks, and you still have the fundamentals to tell the difference.
This talk is about getting to the next level from wherever you're starting, when many of the technical skills that leveled up engineers in the past won't be enough anymore. I came into engineering from a different career, made it to staff at GitHub, and am now on a small team getting to explore AI products at Bluesky. Many of the skills that have advanced my career aren't the technical ones at all, which is why I think that AI tools actually make career advancement easier. I'll cover the stuff that never makes it into a job description: making sure your manager knows what you're doing, building the community around you that makes the next step possible, and the product management skills that are critical for any software engineer to know now.
This talk has been presented at React Summit US 2026, check out the latest edition of this React Conference.
